


Night Music

by allonsytotumblr



Series: I love The Band's Visit in this cafe tonight [3]
Category: The Band's Visit - Yazbek/Moses
Genre: Loneliness, Music, uhhhhh idk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 15:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsytotumblr/pseuds/allonsytotumblr
Summary: Iris, telephone guy, and a musician meet one night in Bet Hatikva.(Guys, I know Iris isn't as popular as the other characters, which is why this one has fewer hits than my other tbv stuff, but this one is by far my best work, I think, so please!!!)





	Night Music

**Author's Note:**

> (His name is Tzachi in The Band's Visit movie, which everyone should watch). Ronnie Elkabetz? Hot. Salah Bakri? Hot. You won't regret it.
> 
> Idk where I was going when I started this, and then it really went off the rails, whatever.

Bet Hatikva sleeps. A young man waits by his phone. A door opens, spilling light from the home into the dark, hot night. It mixes with the cold white fluorescent light of the silent phone booth, and the warm yellow from the street light above. Iris comes from the house, letting the door slam behind her, and that light goes away.

She brought her purse with her, but just like everyone in this town she is not going anywhere. She is only going to sit on this bench, smoke, maybe cry- sometimes she cries after her fights with Itzik, sometimes not- and then go home and sleep. Her house will be quiet, and create the illusion of domestic peace. Iris will get up early, and go to work without talking to anyone. A routine. Predictable.

The bench is near the pay phone, which as always at this time of night, is occupied.

“Hey, Tzachi,” she says.

“Hi, Iris.”

“Did she call yet?” Dina always asks him. Iris thinks this is rude. The answer is obviously no. Everyone in Bet Hatikva knows that Almina will not call. She has gone away to university- a bit late at her age, but better than the others in this town who never went at all- and Iris bets that she has met someone else and is enthusiastically cheating on Tzachi even now while he waits nights and nights by the phone.

Who can blame her? Iris thinks savagely. What does he have to offer Almina? Loyalty, at least. He is here every night. Here before she storms out of her house, and she always goes back inside before he leaves. She has never seen him go home. Maybe he sleeps here, curled in the light of the phonebooth. Iris and Tzachi always see each other here, and at first she pitied him, but then it occurred to her that she, Iris, is not in a much better situation. A woman who fights with her husband almost nightly is not above a boy who routinely waits for a phone call that will not come.

  
“Do you want to smoke?” She says. The tiny flame of her lighter is orange at the tip of her cigarette and then gone. He shakes his head. Surely neither of them planned to spend their evenings this way, when she got married, when Almina went away to school.

“Happy birthday.”

“How do you know?”

“Itzik told me.”

“Thank you.” It annoys her that Itzik talks about her. He is always saying, “my wife this…” and, “Iris that…”

“Because he loves you,” her father always says when she complains.

“Because he never does anything himself!” Iris replies. She is the one who had a baby seven months ago, and yet she is the one rushing back to her job, because they have no income apart from her. It’s not like Itzik needs to stay home and do childcare, her father would gladly do it- he is at their house enough anyway.

Tonight will be a long one, out here on the bench. She does not want to walk back inside to see the guests again. Though this is what her and Itzik’s fights always look like, the presence of strangers makes her consider what a horrible mess their marriage must look like to outsiders. Iris caused a scene when she left, and she is loath to face them again.

Someone else walks up to the phone, and Iris turns away, seeing that he wears a blue uniform, and thinking it is one of them come from her home. But it is not, only another one of the stranded musicians. She sees that he carries an oud. Not in a case, but exposed in his hand. Why has he taken with him to wait by the phone booth? He could have left in in the home of whoever he was staying with. Maybe is is valuable. Maybe he thought it would be stolen if he left it alone. Iris is angry at this thought, if it is the reason why. Bet Hatikva is a million terrible things- but its inhabitants are not malicious, not even to an Egyptian.

Itzik, her father, if they encountered a waiting man with a oud would demand that he play them something. But Iris is not the sort to request music from strangers, and so the oud remains across his lap, its strings as quiet and still as the payphone.

“Did anyone call?” The man asks in English, addressing Tzachi.

“No,” he answers, turning his gaze momentarily away from the red phone and the streaky clear plastic walls of the booth. “But soon.”

The boy misunderstands. “He’s not talking about Almina,” Iris tells Tzachi, in Hebrew. “He means his own people.” To the man she says, “Your embassy not called yet.”

“Thank you.” The members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra are very formal, very gracious. He takes a seat on the bench, but on the opposite end, and Iris hopes he will not talk to her.

“Beautiful night,” he announces. “Beautiful town.”

“You think so?” Iris says flatly, because she knows that Tzachi will not respond. He is focused on the still payphone, and wants to talk to this man even less than she does.

“The sunset earlier, very nice. There is no lights here, and you can see,” he pauses. It is hard speaking in a language that is not either of their own. “All the sky. All the colors.”

Iris cannot remember the sunset from today. Or the sunrise. She goes and comes home from work at those times. She was looking at the traffic then. “I did not see it.”

“You live here all your life?”

Why does he feel the need to talk, to fill the heavy night air with conversation, why does this man- her father’s age- care how long Iris has lived here? Yes, the answer is yes. You don’t move to Bet Hatikva. You are born here, and you die here. Iris has been here for thirty one years, and now on her birthday night, she feels the weight of this time on her, and knows she will be here for another thirty one more.

“I do,” she tells the musician.

“Nice place, I think. You have kind people here. We come here by mistake, but tonight they all take us in. All our band have a place to stay.”

Iris does not say anything. She lets him think what he wants. If she had her way, no guests would be staying with them, but Itzik is generous, and a fool.

How long is this man going to sit here? She and Tzachi rarely talk during their meetings, but with the other man here, she is reminded of the situation back at home.

She should not have said those things to Itzik, about the tree, about his immaturity in English. They should have been shouted in Hebrew, kept between the family. But as much as she embarrassed herself, she wanted these people to understand how she feels as a new mother, as the only one with a job for so long now. They are not poor- it is very cheap to live in Bet Hatikva- but still it is unfair. He should work, he should stop being such a child. They are the same age, and yet he is  so...

“When does your embassy close?” She asks the waiting man, wanting him to leave.

“Midnight.”

Iris has never remained that late. Maybe Tzachi will outlast him, but not her.

“But they will call soon. Before then. You are waiting for a call too?” He says.

“No, I am not, just…” says Iris. Just, what? Just waiting.

She is so tired, so tired of fighting with Itzik, and of their crying baby in the other room, and of all of it. The two men before her, Tzachi with nothing, going nowhere, but very in love with Almina, and at the other, a musician, part of something, going to Pet Hatikva tomorrow, both have the patience to sit here and wait for other people to call.

Would Itzik wait for her like Tzachi does? Iris wonders. He used to call her work all the time, and always she would worry that something had happened to the baby or her father, but nothing ever had. “I just want to talk to you,” he would say, but she told him to stop, saying she was too busy to talk, though this wasn’t true. So maybe he would.

Iris would not. She does not have the patience to wait for someone who doesn’t care enough to call home. After one night of standing like Tzachi does, she would have broken up with Almina at once.

This boy should too, she thinks, but it is not her place to say, and what power does reason have over the devotion and longing she sees in his face lit by the fluorescent light? It’s like a soap opera, honestly.

When she and Itzik fight and she leaves, he does not follow her. It would not be welcome. She leaves to get away from him, but also Itzik knows there is no danger of her leaving for good. And he is right; even now she picks up the strap of her purse, and uncrosses her legs, shifting on the bench, preparing to depart.

Sounds from the strings of the oud, and she stops. The man is playing, the instrument is now held as he would during a performance, but he is not looking at either of them, but they listen anyway.

The song is simple, not something that their band would play at an official performance. It reminds her of nights where you wait, where you do not want to sleep because something may happen. It reminds her of all the hours Tzachi spends out here, by the phone. It reminds her of longing for a past that you did not realize you lost until too late. The notes mix with the hot air and the darkness, and she forgets that she must go back home to people she does not want to see. Iris does not listen to music much- the radio in her car is broken, and at home she is always doing something else, but this, this she would listen to, pressing rewind over and over.

The melody finishes, but not like the half finished composition she heard at home earlier. Rather, the music melts away as if it was never there, the notes sliding off on the night wind. It was short, perhaps two minutes. Maybe it was all improvised, and he will forget it tomorrow, the piece only ever heard two lonely Israelis, and never thought of again. Neither of his listeners say anything. It was very good, but he was not playing for them, and to clap, to compliment it seems wrong. It was better than a performance, Iris thinks.

Sitting still, she hears the sounds of Bet Hatikva at night, that is to say mostly silence. It seems peaceful now, silence that doesn’t have to be filled by anything. It is the silence she want in her home when  her baby is sleeping at last, and she and Itzik are not fighting anymore. Quiet after an absent girlfriend has finally called, and Tzachi can finally go home and sleep. Silence because a traveler is looking at a sunset in a beautiful town with kind people.

“Bye, Tzachi," Iris says.

“Bye.”

She goes back inside.

 

**Author's Note:**

> 'Who's the musician?" You may say. WELL, I was reading the tbv book somewhere online, idk where, i can't find at again, and when listing the cast, it mentions the musicians that play the instrumental songs in-between scenes: Soraya, and Haj-Butrus, and how they're sort of...cryptids? like maybe they're physically there, just dude playing some songs at night, but maybe they're smth different. I thought it was really cool, so here's this fic.
> 
>  
> 
> I saw the band’s visit on January 26th (and I’m selling a playbill if anyone wants it) and i was like 20 minutes late because the stupid bus, and i RAN through times square to the ethel barrymore theater, and I was crying to the people taking the tickets, so they let me in, and i cried like- ten more times during the show, and I’m going again on march 30th! (Do not think for a second I am rich, I just have no impulse control and no one to check me).
> 
> This is so LONG, I am begging you can I get some comments. I wish people wrote more for this show!! Also I wish it wasn’t c l o s i n g


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